Lucy
by jambled
Summary: How do you grieve a child you never acknowledged? Much Brennan angst, Booth comfort. Finit.
1. Friday Afternoon

**_C h a p t e r O n e – F r i d a y A f t e r n o o n_**

Sometimes time heals all wounds. Sometimes it leaves it under a thick layer of dust, covered for the moment but ready to be just as open and just as bleeding after the next breeze strong enough to blow that layer of dust away. For Temperance Brennan, a single phone call stirred the dust from that blood drenched layer in her mind that she had tried so hard to intelligently rationalise. When that hadn't worked she'd simply tried to forget. But sometimes a photographic memory served too well; the squalling cries and sticky limbs that were taken so quickly from her. The shame of it all. The empty feeling afterwards and later, that night, the firm decision that it would never happen again. That, in her mind, it hadn't happened before. Because that was the only way she could cope.

For sixteen years she remained in firm denial until that day in sun drenched July when the latest killer had been handed over to prosecution and she was languishing in the thought of a weekend spent doing her current two favourite things; bed time with Sully and getting through some of the old bones backlogs of the Jeffersonian. It was a normal Friday afternoon for her; she was tidying her office while Angela told her about weekend plans she wasn't paying attention to. Zack, Cam and Booth had left for the day and the air conditioning was soothing background noise. There was a feeling of Friday to the air that could have been as simple as saying everyone was leaving early, but it was always more that that to Brennan. The lab itself, an inanimate object lit only by the human life within seemed to settle itself down, hunkering over, waiting eagerly to be engulfed by silence.

"I mean if you and Sully would actually drag yourselves away from the bedroom for an hour we could double date. I bet Sully is one of those men who are secretly fabulous at bowling. And he'd look cute in those shoes-." Brennan's cell rang and she fished in her bag, expecting to see Booth's number. Instead it was an out of state number, unrecognisable. A number that could have kept quiet and let her remain in the self obligatory oblivion of the sixteen year old event that she was accustomed to. Instead, it made Angela fall silent while it trilled.

"Brennan." She answered the phone in her usual way; briskly. If people wanted niceties, they could call someone who wasn't so pressed for time.

"Dr Temperance Brennan?" The question wasn't a new one. The voice was one she hadn't heard, and as she replied she let her mind quickly sort through where she might have heard it before.

"Yes, this is her." Another file went into her bag to peruse at home. There were x-rays she wanted to look at before she started on the actual bones. Sully had the propensity to sleep straight after sex, while Brennan stayed awake, using those hours to work.

"This is Ray Vanault." His name and sombre tone punched through the dust that had accumulated, went straight to the wound. His next words ripped it wider and his words after that rubbed in the salt.

"It's about Lucy. Bad news." Brennan felt herself sink into the chair. She could tell from Angela's worried look that the way she felt was expressing itself on her face.

"What is it?"

"I… She was found Tuesday night. Dead. My little girl was in a ditch… They just left her." She couldn't breathe. On the other end of the line in a city far away, Ray Vanault was making use of his oxygen in great, gulping sobs of sorrow but she couldn't summon any air into her lungs to approximate his grief. At the moment, she couldn't feel anything. She was airless and shocked but was still calculating the time between when Lucy was found and the call that came to vanquish her weekend plans.

"It's Friday now." She could state nothing but fact, could deal with nothing else. The little air that she had gathered to give him that sentence was too precious to waste on recriminations.

"We couldn't find you… You never leave a return address… We never even knew which city you lived in." His words carried guilt across to her, to settle right next to the shock. It was a heavier weight and through it she managed to draw a breath, not to knock away his truth but to accept it.

"I'm sorry. I'm so… Sorry." A deep grief was beginning to pervade the shock, dissipate it somewhat. When her parents left, when Russ left… Nothing compared to the sorrow that was settling. Not being firsthand, she'd never had the day to day worry. But even removed as she was there was still enough of a link to make her want to rip her soul out and exchange it just so that Lucy could live.

"The police haven't released the body. They haven't told us anything. We're her parents… We just want to bury…" He trailed off, and again the sobs were sudden before they were stifled. Brennan clenched the table harder. They were her parents. Them. Why did they think reaching out to her would help anything? She could have remained unconscious to what had happened, could have remained in her blissful oblivion that required nothing more than two cards a year.

"If you take a flight at nine you can be here in a little over three hours. You have the address?" He knew she did. That was where the two cards a year were delivered safely. She'd never had one returned to her; had never put a return address on. The more oblivious she could make it, the better.

"You want me to… Be there?"

"You might not know this but she would want you there. Lucy didn't know you but she loved you." She could hear the slight bitterness over the strangled grief. She wanted to tell him that it wouldn't have bothered her if Lucy didn't love her, if she didn't know anything about her at all. She'd effectively failed in that area of her life and it was one she didn't care to be reminded of, but Ray Vanault and his picture perfect housewife Linda had insisted on a minimum contact agreement. Too scared to argue, a sixteen year old Temperance Brennan had numbly signed the papers and had been able to do that part of it right.

"I…" Brennan looked across the desk at Angela. Though she'd remained blissfully quiet there were already questions crowded in her eyes. Going away for the weekend would mean questions from Angela, explanations for Sully. If it stretched on longer than that there would be leave reasons needed for Cam, and Booth wouldn't give up until he found out. But not going… She owed Lucy more than she had to give and being there would be some kind of penance. Brennan didn't believe in such a Christian invention, but she did believe that Lucy deserved more from the most unreachable person in her life.

"I'll take the flight and book into a motel. Will you be there tomorrow morning?"

"I'll make sure we're here for you. And Temperance… I'm sorry. For what you must be feeling." She hung up feeling hollow. Ray Vanault's last words had diffused the last of her shock. The guilt she felt was held at bay with action; she had started booking herself a flight on the internet even as she finished talking. The sadness she had managed to dampen for the moment, but that meant there was nothing left.

"Sweetie, what was that all about?" Angela was sitting forward on her chair but Bren didn't look at her until her last credit card number was in place and the seat request was processing.

"One day, Ang, I will tell you. But I can't today." The words wouldn't be found. Irrational and childish as it was, the human condition is to leave things unspoken lest they become real. Brennan was going with irrationality on this, since nothing in her rational world could explain the way she felt, or how she could make this better.

"You're going somewhere?" The printer whirred to life and shot out her reserve pass. Brennan nodded, wiped dry eyes. Crying was a normal reaction, she knew, but she knew she wouldn't be able to cry without feeling it all. And feeling it, too, meant it was more real than it had been for the last sixteen years.

"For the weekend. Maybe for longer. I'll call Cam if I'm going to be away more than that. I think I've got sick days owing. If Booth calls…" She'd been running on auto-pilot in the last few sentences, mentally running through one checklist while she verbally barraged Angela with another. Then they collided on one point; Booth.

"I don't want you to tell Booth anything. About the conversation I just had on the phone, about the fact that the phone rang at all. Tell him its work related, another case."

"This isn't work related?" Bren picked up her bag and put her phone in. For such a small object, it had managed to communicate to her unsurpassed terrible news.

"No, Ang." Her best friend followed her as far as the doors out of the lab, still quiet.

"Bren, I love you." The words were not new from Angela; she was always best at displaying her feelings as soft waves of sound in the air but these, uttered at this time, almost undid Brennan. She looked Angela in the eye as she felt the first tear roll down her face. Her best friend could tell her she loved her, and she hadn't told Lucy once. Hadn't managed to get past the irrational feelings that inundated her the few times she'd laid eyes on her, or heard her voice. And saying it now to Ang would make her want to tell her the whole story, from abrupt, sickeningly scary start to even worse finish. But she had a flight to catch.

"Yeah, Ang. I know." She left the building to its Friday afternoon settling and walked into dusky sunlight. She wondered if Lucy had known. That despite her self-imposed disconnection from it all, that she'd loved her. She wondered if she herself had realised until now, until it was too late.

_A/N: So I'm trying a new style of writing; far more abstract than what I usually write. _

_So you might be sitting there going 'what the hell' but it will all be explained! _

_Pushing the button and sending some love will make it happen so much quicker, though. _

_Bribery, shmibery._


	2. Saturday Morning

**_C h a p t e r T w o – S a t u r d a y M o r n i n g_**

**P a r t O n e**

It was as awkward as she'd hoped it wouldn't be. Even without incredibly perceptive people skills, she could tell Ray and Linda Vanault were avoiding her eyes, avoiding looking at her completely. They'd invited her into their home with desperation etched around their faces as if just having her there would provide answers. As if returning to the start could bring some compromise to the end. She knew what they all wanted; to erase Tuesday night, to have Lucy back and Temperance, a stranger, out of their house. Instead they were showing her Lucy's room and the carefully kept cards that dated back to the first one that had arrived, fifteen years before.

"The police are downstairs." Ray Vanault arrived to break the silence between his wife and Brennan. They'd been numbly staring at different things; Linda Vanault at the half-made bed, probably remembering the last time she'd roused her daughter from it. Brennan had fixed her eyes at a picture that had only the corner showing, the only thing in the room she even remotely recognised. She'd flown in for a brief meeting with Lucy, at the Vanault's request. They'd wanted to keep her in Lucy's life as much as Lucy allowed. Brennan had taken Lucy to a park, feeling inadequate and awkward. They'd fed ducks and eaten sandwiches packed carefully by Linda Vanault. Brennan had pushed Lucy on the swing while her parents had watched on. Linda Vanault had found time to take a picture and in the picture Lucy's auburn hair was all she could see, flying as she and the swing fought so hard against the gravity that tethered her.

"Oh." Linda Vanault pushed a piece of grey hair back and straightened her already-straight skirt. She and her husband were at least ten years older than Brennan and she'd always felt the difference so strongly.

"Mr and Mrs Vanault." The detective nodded towards her hosts as they preceded down the stairs before fixing his eyes firmly on her.

"Dr Temperance Brennan." Brennan held out her hand and inwardly cringed at the shudder in it. She still had the title to hide behind, but it was nothing more than a spoken formality, unable to shield her from more personal emotions.

"Dr. Brennan, Billy Wright." He shook her hand firmly before motioning them all to seats. In the week the police had been in and out of the small home they'd established seating rules, comfortable places that could be found quickly. Brennan was as yet unassigned an unspoken chair and she lingered on her feet as everyone else settled into their well worn positions. Probably the same positions they'd all sat in Tuesday night, as they'd been handed the news that would devastate them, as the detective had absorbed the grief he brought to their family room.

"I've got news about the perpetrator." There was a smaller armchair that had been left vacant. Brennan sat on the edge as the Det. Wright spoke.

"You've found who did it?" Ray Vanault's arm was curled around his wife's shoulder, her hand buried in his. They had unconsciously formed themselves a wall, something unyielding, bracing for more.

"We think we have him. DNA will convince us completely, but my gut says we've got him." Brennan saw, then, that it wasn't just FBI agents that went on intuition steered by the humble stomach. Maybe Booth wasn't such an institution.

"Who is it?" Linda Vanault's voice was shaky but her eyes were clear.

"A man known to us on several counts of rape and indecent exposure." Linda Vanault's gasp on the word rape made Wright pause. He looked at his hands briefly before he continued. Brennan stayed quiet. She felt like an observer in this except that Wright wasn't Booth and the Vanault's were more connected to her than any of the suspect's they'd had in interrogation had ever been. As much as she wanted to shut out the detective's voice, his words were directed at her as well.

"We think he forced Lucy into his car before driving her to a deserted park north of where she was found. He's refusing to talk but evidence found so far means we can hold him. DNA will put him away for life."

"And we can have Lucy's body then… Bury her?" Ray Vanault's arm around his wife tightened and Brennan noticed her slight wince.

"We've got as much information as we can from Lucy… Any time you're ready to have the funeral home pick her up, you can." Linda Vanault gave her husband's hand a squeeze as she rose from the couch. Her eyes searched for the cordless phone that was sighted on the sideboard. Her husband reached it first, wordlessly handed it to her. As a unit, they left the room. At the door, Ray Vanault turned, nodded at Det. Wright.

"Billy…" Wright nodded back, eyes blinking slowly. He'd done his job. Brennan wondered if he felt as drained as she always did or whether he still felt excited at the fact that, in an increasingly justice-less world, justice had been served.

**P a r t T w o - M o n d a y M o r n i n g**

The funeral was held on Monday. Brennan called Cam earlier than she'd be in the lab and had left a message on an answering machine that, blissfully, couldn't ask her anything. She was too emotionally exhausted to call Angela, or Sully, or Booth. This weekend had sucked the life from her and replaced it with a pain so sharp it throbbed in her chest every time she sucked in a breath. Consequently, she was breathing shallowly, having to remind herself that she needed the air and couldn't just stop breathing.

"Sit with us. Please." Linda Vanault still looked like the perfect mother; pearls decorated her otherwise black attire and mascara-less eyes allowed a smudge free path of tears. Brennan envied her the freeness with which her tears were shed. She still hadn't managed to surpass the lone one which had rolled down her face as she left Angela. Maybe stifling it at that point had left her stunted, unable to weep for Lucy despite the fact that she wanted to honour her with tears. Wanted to somehow reconcile herself with how many hours she could have spent with Lucy, how much time she could have given a child who had wanted her to be there so much more than she was.

"Of course." Brennan followed the Vanaults to the front row, ignoring the stares that followed her. All of the people here probably knew Lucy better than she had yet she was given a privileged position.

"Family, friends…" The pastor paused and Brennan realised she didn't directly fit into either category. She was someone else entirely, an unexplained stranger with a ticket to fly out that night, and no reason to look back. The contract she and the Vanaults had was null and void without Lucy.

"Lucy Vanault was a wonderful, wonderful person." He went on to list achievements that Brennan had never realised Lucy had been capable of. Had never wished to know. She'd been a phantom figure in Lucy's life, never looking in more than she had to.

She stared at the picture of Lucy that rested lightly on the coffin. Taken only weeks before Lucy had been killed, it showed a unusually pretty teenager. Auburn hair and big blue eyes stared out of a mahogany frame. Brennan wondered if the funeral home had matched the coffin to the frame intentionally; now the Vanaults could have a picture of Lucy inside mahogany, exactly as she would remain for the rest of their lives.

Her biggest, most selfish regret was realised only when the coffin was being lowered into the ground. She wished she'd never looked back. She wished she'd not sent the cards, not made any contact with a child who had, after that first taste, wanted so much more from her. And that was what finally made her cry.

**P a r t T h r e e – M o n d a y A f t e r n o o n**

She'd said her goodbyes at the funeral and had declined the wake. She wanted to stop wiping her overflowing eyes, let the tears settle on her cheeks. The Vanault's knew the time her flight left and had said goodbye before Brennan got into the taxi that would remove her from their lives for good. She returned their farewells and had ridden away from the funeral with her eyes turned towards the other headstones, away from the empty place that was still waiting for its chilly marble headstone.

Back in the hotel room, she sat in the corner of the shower and let the cold water beat down on her. She needed to feel something other than the pain. Freezing was all she could think of.

She hadn't thought of the lab all weekend but now her thoughts strayed to it. Angela and Jack would probably have found some reason to work together. Cam would be doing paperwork and Zack would probably be identifying the skeleton that Brennan had been meaning to get done on the weekend, before Lucy.

Getting up and turning the shower off, Brennan walked through to her bag and pulled out jeans and a shirt before hurriedly returning to the bathroom with a brush. She'd somehow lost track of time and was going to be late for her flight if she didn't hurry up. Looking in the mirror, she paused in mid-stroke. Their eyes had been the same shade. And their hair. She'd never noticed that before.

"Temperance?" A knock and a call at the door made her put the brush down and turn. She opened it to see Linda Vanault standing outside, a picture clutched in her hand.

"I thought you'd want this." The woman was still in her mourning clothes. Brennan wondered whether Ray Vanault was downstairs with the car running while guests at the wake were alone in their house.

"It's really the only one we had of you and her…" The awkwardness increased and Brennan reached out to take the picture she had looked at two days before. Linda Vanault's words carried guilt through the doorway like a rising tide that Brennan almost felt a need to step back from.

"I'm sorry. That I wasn't there more. That I didn't want to be more involved." Brennan felt her voice lose itself in the raggedness of her throat towards the end of her sentence but, looking up, she saw that the message had got through. Linda Vanault's eyes were suddenly tearless.

"I'm sorry." The older woman said just as softly. "You entrusted her and we… We couldn't keep her safe." Brennan shook her head, realising she'd had it the wrong way around the whole time. The Vanault's hadn't been blaming her, they'd been blaming herself. She'd been too busy doing the same thing to notice.

"It is not your fault. I wanted better for her, and that's what she got from you." The hug she suddenly received from Lucy's mother was fierce and she imagined the love Lucy felt when she was enveloped in it.

"And you were a child. You did the right thing for Lucy, and that's all you've done since. I promise." Linda Vanault's words were delivered straight to Brennan's ear as she hugged back. Then they were just two women in a motel hallway, locked together in grief.

_A/N: Thanks for all your reviews so far; they've been fantastic! Which is why I'm posting this so quickly._

_I know a lot of people wanted Brennan to call Booth but I think this chapter needed just Brennan. It was something she has to deal with alone, in a strange city, in a place where someone so connected to her has died. She doesn't know how to cope and she's not herself; ergot, she hasn't felt the need to pick up the phone and call Booth. She just wants it to be over and forgotten; if she tells Booth the circle of information widens and she won't be able to bury it as efficiently as she did before. At least that's the way I've seen it as I was writing! _

_Hope you enjoyed; as always, please review. Thanks for reading._


	3. Tuesday Morning

**_C h a p t e r T h r e e – T u e s d a y M o r n i n g_**

She felt drained. Worse than after she'd found the puddle of blood in the middle of her living room that, at the time, she'd thought was her brother's. Worse than when her mother had shown up on the angelator, in lifelike, 3 dimensional glory. Worse than the morning after Howard Epps had fallen to his death off her balcony. This was moments like those put together in a great, glutinous mess before hitting her like a sledgehammer, sinking into the spaces they could find. She'd already had one day of leave and, though she had more time owing, she wasn't sure how she could explain a second. The questions from Angela would get worse. And Booth would come knocking on her door, demanding to know what was wrong. She didn't know how she would explain this; that fact that she'd indirectly lied to them all, including herself. But the lie she'd spun herself had been so carefully constructed that she'd managed the façade effectively. Now she'd caught herself out, she was sure Angela and Booth, at least, would be able to do the same.

"Morning, Dr. Brennan." Zack was in already, his suit as yet unwrinkled. The skeleton on the table was impassive as Zack's shadow swooped around it, his pencil scratching as it made notes. Brennan nodded at him as she crossed the floor to her office. She wanted a day of paperwork, of silence, of thought gathering. Her last rationalisation had been torn away as soon as she'd received the phone call, completely obliterated as she'd hugged Linda Vanault and taken the reprieve she'd offered. Her new way to deal with it would somehow have to deal with the thought that Lucy would never be there. Although that was what she'd wished for once, sixteen years ago, the last few days had convinced her of the fact that it wasn't what she wanted and no amount of thinking about what she could have done differently would bring Lucy back, or the feeling that hit her every time she considered that. It was irrational and absolutely unscientific but Brennan couldn't help but deliberate over the fact that she'd wanted Lucy to never have existed… And that now she didn't, except in memories, a place that barely found space in Brennan's mind. The Vanaults would have photo albums filled with memories but Brennan had one single photo, and the cards she was still left to send. And those precious few thoughts of Lucy; her terrifying birth and that one day with the ducks.

"Hey, Bren." Angela was leaning on the doorway and Brennan absentmindedly wondered just how long she'd been there. All Brennan had been trying to do was tell herself to breathe, forget the picture of the blue eyed girl on the swing that was in her bag. She'd wanted the picture near her today and she hadn't been able to stand the thought of it sitting in her apartment, a lone Lucy, a stranger amongst her other pictures of friends and colleagues.

_Breathe._

_Just breathe._

"Hey, Ang." Angela took her words as an invitation and sat herself on a chair across from Brennan.

"How are you feeling?" She sounded sympathetic and Brennan felt her hands curling into fists underneath the table. She just had to get through this conversation and convince Angela she was fine. Then things could go back to normal. Except for Lucy. Nothing would be normal for Lucy. That thought almost undid her but the pain from her nails digging into her skin made her pull together.

"I'm fine."

"You ready to tell me about this weekend?" Angela looked expectant, one leg flipped over the arm of the chair. Brennan envied her apparent ease.

"It was just a family thing."

"I thought you didn't have any other family."

"I don't…" Brennan paused, realising she'd inadvertently slipped. The self-control she applauded herself on couldn't be trusted with this. Recovering and pushing her hair back, she shrugged, tried to look as if her next words weren't knocking the wind out of her.

"Not any more."

"Dr. Brennan, I need you to sign off on my findings and double check the anomaly in the cervical spine. Skull's ready too, Angela." As usual, Zack's interruption was perfect enough to have been scripted and Brennan looked up at him, nodded.

"I'll be there in a minute, Zack." Angela, who had stood at Zack's words, gave Bren a look.

"I'll be there in a minute, Angela." Brennan repeated firmly. Waiting until Angela was out of sight of the office, she rolled her chair away from the desk and opened her palms, trying to keep the blood pooled in them from dripping on the floor.

**P a r t T w o – M i d d a y T u e s d a y**

She hadn't realised how much she'd been waiting for him until he appeared early Tuesday afternoon. Working with Zack, Brennan had so far managed to avoid Angela. Wearing gloves covered the wounds that were already beginning to scab over. In a few days they'd be white crescents on her palm; unless she chose to use them again as a distraction.

"Bones!" As usual, the call came before he walked onto the lab platform. Inwardly, Brennan cringed. She'd already had Angela to deal with this morning; admittedly, according to Angela's final look, it was a conversation that wasn't yet over. She didn't want to have to lie to Booth as well but she knew she wouldn't be able to find the words. Or to tell him that her absolute commitment to not having children was borne of the fact that she'd been there, done that, as a terrified sixteen year old.

"Booth." She kept her eyes on the bones, mentally double checking everything Zack had written down. She was sure there were no mistakes but she was giving the skeleton an extra appraisal. It gave her something to focus on, something to keep her mind away from the weekend.

"There was a skeleton found in a park." It had been a long five minute silence before he spoke. She'd been waiting him out, her eyes still remaining steadfastly on the bones in front of her.

"Okay." Standing, Brennan took the clipboard Zack handed her and signed her name.

"I want you to get Angela to input the spine data into the angelator. Try a reverse engineered weapons analysis. Something should be in the database; once you find it sign off on the body completely and print out a release for the family." She instructed Zack as she reluctantly took her gloves off, keeping her hands loosely balled by her side. The last thing she needed was Booth using his annoyingly accurate perception to notice her hands and ask her about them.

"I just have to get my bag." She still hadn't met his eyes but she watched his knees as she skirted around him to walk down the lab steps. She heard him say something to Angela as she left, but she couldn't make out the words. It made her hurry; being alone in the car with him would be worrying enough, but being alone with him after he'd been given Angela's perceptions of their conversation that morning would test her evading abilities.

"Ready." Brennan waited for him at the bottom of the gate with her bag. He joined her and they walked to the car park in silence. It wasn't until they were both buckled in that he spoke.

"You were away on the weekend." He didn't phrase it as a question, but she found herself answering anyway.

"Yes. I had… There was…" She wasn't even sure how to describe where she was, what had required her to so suddenly fly to another state.

"What, one of your secret cases? Top level security?" He was joking with her and she toyed with a button on her coat as she lied her reply.

"Something like that." She'd phrased it so no more discussion was necessary and hoped he'd leave it at that.

"Teven Valley is a little out of the way. Funny for an important forensic anthropologist like yourself to miss a day of work for a town as small as that." Brennan turned to him, mouth open, already feeling her cheeks flushing.

"You looked up my flight details?" Already, she felt violated. If he'd checked local news, he'd have noticed the biggest story of the day; a murdered teen in a town where the police usually only gave out parking fines and domestic violence apprehensions.

"I was just making sure you were okay. When you didn't show up Monday… And Angela sounded worried when I asked where you were." He took off his glasses as the glances he threw her way became more frequent, his face troubled. She knew he'd checked her flight details before to locate her, and she never remembered it bothering her this much. But she'd never flown to somewhere for something as personal and heart breaking as her last destination had been.

"I just… Never mind." Brennan turned back to the window, hoping Booth would focus his concentration back on the blacktop passing beneath them. If she protested against it too much, he really would start looking into why she was there. He might get his hands on the local paper's weekend edition and wonder at the similarities between the recently dead Lucy Vanault and her.

"Here it is." Booth intruded on the brief silence that had, blissfully, settled between them as he pulled their SUV into a spot near local PD cars. Brennan shoved open the door, her bag already in her hands. If she could get through today, tomorrow would be easier. And if it worked on an exponentially increasing scale, she would be back to her happily self imposed oblivion.

Unfortunately, when she and Booth rounded the corner of the building to emerge on the taped off crime scene, her plan to make it through the day was pulled to a sudden, sickening halt.

"You didn't tell me it was buried under swings." She knew she was being irrational and overemotional but at each creak the swing emitted in the bursts of wind she remembered Lucy; a little red headed girl on a swing.

"What?" Booth looked from Brennan to the swings and back, looking puzzled.

"I can't do this." Brennan uttered words she couldn't recall saying before as she stopped a few metres from the taped area. But this was different. This was too close to home. This was Lucy, ten years ago in the same state as Lucy was today. And neither body could offer her the answers she needed; why Lucy existed at all if it was only for the end she was given.

Strangely, she hadn't felt the need to see Lucy's body, to search for the perpetrator herself. For one thing, the police had already found the man who'd killed her. For another, not feeling a sense of justice when someone was put away anymore convinced her it wouldn't help. And, as she knew too well when she'd had anything to do with the victims' loved ones, it was only a bandaid cure, a moment in the grey of pain and grief where a sudden shimmer of sunlight illuminates the fact that falls back into place to darken their lives; that even if justice is done, it will never become a tool of resurrection.

"You can have Zack. I'll call him now." Brennan pressed the lab's speed dial on her phone and turned away from the scene of the partially uncovered, small skeleton under the swings.

"Bones? Bones!" She ignored Booth's voice calling after as she walked slowly away, telling Zack to get someone at the lab to drive him out to the crime scene. Hanging up, she let her shoulders slump, still turned away from the scene, hoping she'd rounded the corner enough so that the building was a divider from the tiny, pale bones to her. Facing away and concentrating only on breathing, as she'd been doing for the entire day, she didn't hear Booth walk up to her until he was beside her, his arm lightly touching her shoulder, resting there.

"Hey, Bones, what's wrong?" His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, almost a whisper directed towards her ear so the sound waves rippled loose tendrils of her hair. She bit her bottom lip hard enough for the sting to outweigh the crescents in her palms that she was sure she'd just reopened. The words were forming at the back of her throat, threatening to break free. It was a truth she'd never discussed, a part of her that had never been conceded to.

"How do you grieve a child you never acknowledged?" She said softly, hoping the wind would rip it from her lips and carry it past him. She wanted to tell him as much as she didn't want him to know. And she wanted him to answer her question so she could know what she was meant to be feeling, how someone who was always on the outer social circle could deal with something so critically personal.

"What?" Maybe he hadn't heard.

"A child? What do you mean?" No, he'd heard. Brennan sighed, looked away from his mystified expression to see Zack and his driver pulling up in a lab vehicle. Obviously Zack had dropped everything and rushed here, eager to get into the field.

"Dr. Brennan, did you need assistance?" Zack walked over with his own bag, already in coveralls.

"You can take over from me, Zack. Today, you're Booth's forensic anthropologist." Zack looked surprised, then pleased. Brennan tilted her head towards the direction of the crime scene.

"Go see what you can do." Zack almost jogged around the building as Brennan looked up to Booth.

"I'll take the lab vehicle back so you can stay here with Zack."

"I'll drive you back."

Booth let his hand move down her arm slowly as puzzlement still painted his eyes a deeper brown. She shook her head, glad for the moment that tears still evaded her so successfully.

"That's okay. Zack is capable of examining a scene but he needs someone checking he's done it all. I'll see you back at the lab." She stepped away from his light touch and nodded as he did, knowing he was reluctant to let her go. He thought he knew most of her demons and she knew he'd be running them through his head, trying to remember whether there was something that had happened recently, something to make her walk away from a crime scene. And she knew he'd come up empty. She just hoped he found no reason to seek further, no reason to use his finely tuned investigator skills to come up with the real reason she'd booked that flight on Friday.

"Back to the lab." Zack had cornered a researcher to drive him and Brennan instructed him now to return her to work. He conceded and she kept her eyes facing forward as they illegally u-turned, trying not to catch Booth's bewildered stare. Looking in the side mirror, Brennan saw him, still staring after the accelerating car, as he receded to an indistinct nothingness in the space behind them.

_Reviews loved! _


	4. Tuesday Afternoon

_**A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews that have spurred me back into action. This is a draining story to write, so I appreciate the feedback. It's fuel to my fingers! **_

_**This chapter jumps around in time a little but it seemed to fit. Enjoy, and please continue reviewing. Thanks.**_

_**Recognisable characters aren't mine. I'll lay claim to Lucy and the Vanaults.**_

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**_C h a p t e r F o u r – T u e s d a y A f t e r n o o n_**

She walked into the lab and breathed a sigh of relief. Hodgins was not at his table in the lab, which meant Angela was not sitting beside him, waiting to complete the conversation Zack had so conveniently interrupted that morning.

"Dr. Brennan." A voice came from behind her and she braced herself, expecting another surprise. Instead, the courier that delivered to the Jeffersonian was waiting, electronic clipboard in his hand.

"Parcel for you." She reached out a hand and signed before being given the parcel. Her address was on the front and the colour of the packaging suggested it had been overnighted to her. Turning it over, Brennan felt her breath leave her lungs in a whoosh as she stopped just past the threshold of her office. Ray and Linda Vanault's names were on the back, handwriting carefully decipherable.

Moving hesitantly to her chair, Brennan ripped the end off the package and emptied the contents onto her desk. Letters fluttered out, a whirl of coloured envelopes. A lone piece of white paper drifted out with it and Temperance unfolded it.

_Temperance,_

_Lucy wrote these to you. She never sent them, but we think she might like you to have them now._

_Yours, _

_Linda & Ray Vanault_

Straightening her shoulders and making a decision, Brennan walked to her filing cabinet and grabbed a piece of paper. Filling in the few fields that made it up, she signed it and sat it on the desk as she scooped the envelopes into her bag.

Form in hand, she left the room, turning the lights out. A quick walk across the floor to the neighbouring corridor led her to Cam's open door. A short knock prompted Cam to look up from her computer, offer Brennan a smile.

"Dr. Brennan, I hope you're feeling better." A frown decorated her forehead with a crease and she continued as Brennan walked to the desk.

"Are you and Booth back already? I didn't hear him come in." Brennan would've allowed herself a smile if she could have managed it; Booth did like to make his presence known, usually vocally.

"No, Zack is taking over at the crime scene. I came back to give you this." She handed over the piece of paper and waited while Cam read it, breathing shallow. For a brief few moments, she'd been breathing normally but the swings and the letters had given way to the mantra in her head she was becoming used to; _Breathe. Just breathe._

"But… This is effective immediately." Cam looked up to meet Brennan's eyes.

"Yes." Brennan nodded. The silence prompted her to explain.

"I still have holidays owing. And my contract enables me a working break. You have a forensic anthropologist on staff now Zack is qualified, too. He's more than capable." She hoped Cam wouldn't ask her what it was about and, sure enough, the slight animosity that still existed between them prevented any further questions.

"Well, I guess it's covered. I'll see you when you get back." Brennan nodded at Cam and left the office. Then she left the lab.

**P a r t T w o – S u n d a y **

Lucy had been remarkably intelligent. Her test scores were well above average and she'd had her sights set on Brown, or Yale. Brennan had soaked up the Vanaults' praise while she looked over photos of school trips, family picnics and various sporting events. Lucy rode horses, rock climbed and had been planning to get her dive licence as soon as she could. Brennan had then begun to realise how similar they'd been; and like herself, Lucy's birth parents hadn't been there either. But she'd been loved. It was evident in the Vanaults' voices, in the pictures of the three of them; Lucy had been loved. And that was more than Brennan had at that age.

"She really loved autumn. It was her favourite season. We always planned a trip up to Canada in autumn, but just never…" Linda Vanault put her hand to her mouth, as if to stop the words coming out. Her sentence trailed away to non-existence and the silence fell amongst them awkwardly.

"I didn't know she played the violin." Unsure of what social etiquette would demand, Brennan broke the silence as she came across an image of Lucy in an orchestra in the album. She couldn't sit there and soak up Linda Vanault's tears while she still had none.

"Yes, she loved it. She always said playing music was like gracefully finding your way out of a maze of notes. We've got… we've got a CD of her playing, don't we Ray?" Linda Vanault looked up to her husband who was standing, already nodding.

"Here." He found it in a nearby drawer and pressed the CD into Brennan's unwilling hands. She didn't want to hear the musical prowess of a girl whose cold fingers would never again curl around a bow and drag the horsehair across strings. She didn't want to be exposed to another talent of Lucy's that she didn't know about. And she didn't want to have a reminder at her apartment, something that Booth might come across if he ever perused her CD collection again.

"If it's the only copy…" 

"We've got more. She was brilliant on the violin." Ray Vanault nodded, took the photo album out of Brennan's hands as she closed it, finished looking at the happy snaps of a family life she'd never been part of.

"Thanks." Reaching down to her shoulder bag, she put the CD gently inside.

"She'd been asking us if she could see you again." Ray Vanault changed the subject abruptly as he sat back in his seat. She stared into her bag for a moment longer than necessary.

"Really?"

"Yes. She… Well, she's always known who you are. We've never hidden anything from her, which was what we planned from the start." Linda Vanault smoothed an impeccable pleat in her skirt while her husband took over talking.

"That's why we needed you to send the cards. We didn't want her to feel closed off from you. That day you flew in… She still remembers that." Brennan noticed Lucy's father spoke in the present tense and she felt saddened by it. Lucy had been past tense to her from the day she was taken away.

"We were planning a trip to the Jeffersonian. It says on your book jacket that you work there. We had tickets, for the flight. It was going to be a late birthday present." Linda Vanault reached for her husband's hand and held it while Brennan bit her lip. If they'd made it to her workplace… Her past would have suddenly imploded with the introduction of Lucy to a workplace that thought she was adamantly against having a child of her own. Then again, Lucy had only been her own for the briefest of minutes, counted seconds of small hands batting at her teenage cheeks, blue eyes looking into her own.

"It would have been… Nice. To see her again." Brennan found the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them. But somehow, she meant them. If she could choose between revealing Lucy to everyone she knew or having to sit here today, with Lucy's parents, hearing about everything she'd missed out on and everything she would never be able to contribute to in Lucy's life, she would have chosen the former.

"Yes, she would've liked it." Linda Vanault's hands were back at her face, wiping inconsequentially at tears that refused to dry up. Her husband put his arm around her while Brennan stayed on the armchair, her eyes straying from the couple. She didn't belong here. Her grief didn't match theirs, and her regrets were mounting to surpass the autumn trip to Canada they never made, the tickets to the Jeffersonian they would never use. At least they'd had plans that involved more than a card sent at Christmas and another on Lucy's birthday.

"She always thought you were wonderful." Ray Vanault said over his wife's soft sobs. Brennan's eyes slid back to him and she bit her lip, willing the tears to come. They weren't forthcoming and she realised it was fitting; her tear ducts were being as selfish as she had been.

**P a r t T h r e e – T u e s d a y l a t e a f t e r n o o n**

The knock on her door came sooner than expected, before his working day should have ended. She'd turned her phone off and had been sitting in the quiet half dark of her bedroom. Sully had left several messages on her machine. Angela and Booth's messages had come after that, their voices concerned, their tones prying. Brennan didn't want to deal with any of it; she'd come to the realisation that being at work wasn't helping. There would always be another dead child, another dead girl. As long as she couldn't do her job, she'd stay away. She owed the victims that much; someone who would pay full attention to them and not just see a different face in theirs, imagine that their phalanges had once rested on violin strings.

"Bones! I know you're there, I saw your car outside." As usual, Booth announced himself by being vocal, his voice reaching her even in the bedroom.

"If you don't answer the door in five minutes, I'm using my key." Brennan sighed and untucked her legs, flipped them over the side of the bed. She'd changed into comfort clothes as soon as she'd arrived home; black tights and her old college sweater. She'd managed to dig out an old pair of fuzzy socks from her sock drawer and she half walked, half slid down the hallway. She didn't want Booth here, with his questions and his concern and that look in his eyes that made her want to reveal part of her soul sometimes.

"Booth." She opened the door to find him leaning on the doorframe outside, looking at his watch.

"Bones." His voice carried with it a sigh of relief, and she waited for him to say more than that. She didn't want to continue; if she started talking she might not stop.

"I was worried. You weren't answering your phone…" He shuffled in the hallway as Brennan kept the doorway blocked with her body.

"Can I come in?" Brennan sighed, swung the door wider. If she didn't let him in now, he'd probably camp out outside. She'd had enough complaints from her neighbours in the last two years; the explosion in her apartment, Epps. Usually a signed book was enough to placate them.

"Are you…?"

"Sully isn't here." Brennan said flatly. She closed the door, slipped the chain into place. She wasn't sure Sully would be back. She hadn't spoken to him since she'd left a hasty message on his machine, telling him the weekend was off. She knew that alone wouldn't drive him away, but the self imposed solitude she was planning probably would.

"Bones, what's going on?" Brennan turned to see him standing in the middle of her apartment, his hands in his pockets and for a moment she desperately wanted to tell him so that someone could tell her it was okay. But this was Booth; he'd fought tooth and nail to be able to see his son. She had never craved time with Lucy, had been reluctantly forced into the only visit they'd had. But this, too, was the same man who had absorbed the information about her family, the hell she'd been through. He'd tilted her eyes to meet his and told her that he was her family.

"Did something happen in Teven Valley? Angela said you got a phone call-."

"I told her not to tell you about that." Brennan found something else to occupy her mind as a small flame of anger was ignited.

"She's worried about you. We're all worried… You took leave. You don' take leave." With each word, he'd inched closer to her until they were only a foot apart.

"I do now." She focused on his last statement and tried to put his question about Teven Valley out of her mind. But, as usual, his people reading skills seemed beyond mere perception and he repeated the question.

"Teven Valley, Bones. Why did you go there? What happened?"

If she let her secret out in the open, it would make it more real. But if she kept it to herself, the way she had for all of Lucy's life then it would become too easy to forget. She wanted to forget, but at the same time she didn't. She'd been a mother, if only through blood and not action or deed. But it been a position she could lay claim to, if she wanted.

"I…" She started, faltered. It was a sixteen year old secret. She'd managed to hide it so successfully that even the journalists who had descended after her book hit the best sellers list to pick at parts of her life had never found out. Angela, her best friend, didn't have a clue. Her father had no idea he'd had a granddaughter out there, however briefly. And Booth, the man who knew more about her than most people ever got to… Booth was in the dark about it as well. She wasn't sure she wanted to change that.

"Temperance…" Her name filled the space between them and finally, finally, she felt tears fill her eyes. The tears at the funeral had been shed more for herself, but these were for Lucy. They were for a beautiful, red headed girl who would have grown up into a beautiful, red headed woman if she'd been given half the chance.

"Hey… Shhh…" He didn't tell her it would be okay, and she was grateful. He just gathered her in his arms and held her in a hug that wasn't remotely like the other times she'd found herself scared and crying in his arms. This time, she wasn't scared. She was just crying.

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_**And more A/N: I know; most people are hanging out for the Booth/Bren conversation. But this felt like a good break in the story. Next chapter, I promise. **_


	5. Tuesday Night Finit

_**C h a p t e r F i v e – T u e s d a y N i g h t**_

He'd led her to the couch and let her continue crying on his shoulder without asking any more questions. She was grateful; although few questions had been asked, she'd been growing weaker with each new question mark at the end of his words.

"Can I show you something?" She retrieved the picture of Lucy on the swing out of her bag and looked at it herself before handing it over. The sheer delight on Lucy's face was still there. How well an inanimate object can capture a moment in time that will never be repeated.

"Is this you, when you were younger?"

"No." Taking a deep breath, Brennan sat back on the couch beside him and gently took the picture from him so she could look at it again.

"Then who…" She knew he'd be running through the relations he knew about and realising that, no matter how much he dug through the messy makeup of her family, he'd never uncovered a hidden sister. Which left…

"This is Lucy."

"Lucy?" She knew the confusion was still there, but that it would clear quickly if she explained. But did she really want him to look at her and imagine her with a child. A dead daughter that had never been spoken of before, had barely been seen by her own mother. The rare contact between her and Lucy was as contrary as it could be to his relationship with his own son. She was afraid it might reinforce the idea she knew others held of her; that she was cold, and unemotional, and unable to love.

But she had loved Lucy. In her own way, the only way a sixteen year old with a relatively nonexistent future could love. She'd loved Lucy so much that she'd given her up to people who should've been able to give Lucy everything Temperance hadn't had after fifteen. That knowledge was enough to finalise the matter in her mind; she had done the best she could for Lucy at the start. Everything after that; the lack of contact, the reluctant visit, she would take whatever blame Booth chose to place upon her. But the first abandonment was the right thing to do.

"Lucy was…" It was still so hard to say them, these words that had seldom passed her lips before. She remembered whispering them at the baby in her arms all those years ago.

"…My daughter. She was my daughter." Brennan barely registered Booth's intake of breath but his sharp silence made her reluctantly look over to him, unwilling to see the look in his eyes.

"She lived in Teven Valley with her adoptive parents, Ray and Linda Vanault. She just had her sixteenth birthday. Her middle name was Grace and she could play the violin." Averse to looking into his eyes any longer, Brennan looked back at the picture she held, continued filling the silence with something she could deal with; facts.

"This picture is from the last time I saw her. Lucy was six and we fed ducks in the park. Her parents wanted us to stay in touch. The contract was a card on her birthday, a card at Christmastime." Another look at Booth assured Brennan that he was still speechless, struggling not to implode from the bomb she'd dropped on him.

"Ray Vanault rang me Friday afternoon… He told me…" A stray tear slowly traced its way across the left plane of her face and before Brennan had time to flick it away, Booth's thumb was there, drying it, turning her face towards his.

"Lucy was murdered on Tuesday. Her funeral was on Monday. And I never got to tell her how much I loved her, how much I hoped her life without me was better." Brennan bit her lip, only let go when she felt blood well to the surface.

"Booth?" She needed him to say something.

"The body… Under the swings."

"I couldn't look at it without seeing… Without it turning into Lucy." Booth nodded and looked down. Brennan's hands, still holding the photo, had dropped onto the seat between them. Booth used his free hand to pick up the picture.

"She was beautiful. Just like her mother." He said softly, one hand still outstretched, nestling at Bones' throat.

"You don't hate me?" His eyes lifted off the photo as he handed it back and met hers without a trace of malice, only deep sadness.

"Bones, you… You were sixteen." Obviously he'd done the math.

"Yes." She'd been so miserable at the group home, so alone. She'd always been solitary as a child but she'd always had Russ and her parents; a backup if she didn't want to say anything, put her ideas into the world. Without them she'd been truly alone. Then there'd been Grange. Older than her, charmingly different, a family story to match her own. He'd unfailingly pursued her from her first arrival at the home and she'd needed something to stop her feeling like there was never going to be anyone other than her in the world. And for a while it had worked, until she became pregnant and he faded back amongst the street kids, leaving her alone again.

"But since then… I should've called maybe, written more. Seen her more than once." Brennan's voice was self-deprecating and she felt Booth's hand move down to unclench hers, prevent the picture from rumpling.

"You did the best you could for her." Booth's voice was fierce, but it didn't make Brennan look up from his hand on hers, both loosely holding the picture of her child.

"You were so young, Bones. Too young to make any sort of life for a child. You were a child yourself." The softness at the end of his sentence made Brennan shake her head. She'd always imagined that was the case, but with Booth voicing it she realised that wasn't why she'd given Lucy up.

"I didn't want her, Booth. My own child and I didn't want her. The whole time I was pregnant, I was so… I wanted to fall down the stairs, to have something happen to me so she would just go away." Brennan took a deep breath. She'd never expressed this before, not even to herself. Saying it now made the self revulsion she already held score deeper into her flesh.

"And then, after I'd signed all the papers, after the home had told me about the family she'd live with, about the life she'd have without me and how much better it would be…" Brennan had kept her eyes down throughout her last few sentences but she lifted them now, met Booth's.

"But I held her, and I wanted her. She was so small, but she was perfect, and she was something that was all mine. And then… They took her away, and I was back to being alone." Brennan carefully detangled her hand from Booth's and set the picture gently on the table in front of them.

"I decided it was safer, being alone." Her eyes went back to Booth's, reluctantly straying from the image, the glee on the six year olds face.

Silence reigned between them for a moment, and Brennan tried to decipher anything from Booth's eyes but they were shadowed by his brows.

In time, he spoke.

"Bones..." His hand found hers again and for a moment she felt the internal warmth that was so unfamiliar to her; Russ yelling polo through an open school window, her mother and father waving as she crossed a street, Lucy's hand coming to drift along her cheek, tiny fingers furling and unfurling like butterfly wings on the way down. Those moments where she felt she truly belonged.

In Booth's touch there was the promise of more, but between now and then there was Sully and Parker, Rebecca and their working life. There were other things that needed to be done before either of them would be ready, and there would be Lucy; to remember, to grieve for, to never forget as completely as she had been forgotten when she was alive.

But right now, there was just warmth.

She laid her head on his familiar shoulder and drank in the warmth. Because Brennan knew too well how brief these moments could last, how quickly they flared before dropping back to the coldness of the everyday.

"You, Bones, are never alone." Booth's voice drifted across her hair, so similar in colour to Lucy's, and Brennan shut her eyes. In an instant she was back in the hospital and that little hand was gliding so softly along her cheek, and she was savouring the moment, the helpless cries. They faded to that day in the park, Lucy's bright screams as she fought harder to soar high, the excited giggles.

Then, they just faded.

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_And fade to black._

_I realise this has been a terribly long time coming and therefore may be anticlimactic to some who were expecting a big, emotional, drawn out scene. But that's not Booth and Brennan, at least the way I imagine their relationship. _

_This is the last chapter, so I hope you enjoyed. The reviews have been wonderfully encouraging and I would like to thank all of you, reviewer's or not, for reading._

_-Jambled._

_Dedicated to Lucy G. 1993-2004._


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